


cinders

by socallmedaisy



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-01
Updated: 2012-11-01
Packaged: 2017-11-17 12:57:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/551809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/socallmedaisy/pseuds/socallmedaisy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She can’t even get through a holiday without it reminding her of Brittany, and the thought makes her want to laugh but she can barely get through a day without it reminding her of Brittany either, so. (Halloween fic, set post 4x04)</p>
            </blockquote>





	cinders

**Author's Note:**

> written for the [Monster Fic Mash](http://themostrandomfandom.tumblr.com/post/34297004490/brittana-u-monster-fic-mash-project) on tumblr.

It’s the constant reminders of Brittany that are the worst thing, like even once she’s back in Louisville she can’t escape the little things that sneak up and ambush her when she least expects it. 

Some things are easier to give up, like how she doesn’t even miss Facebook or Twitter anymore, because if she doesn’t go online she doesn’t have to see Brittany’s updates, or her friends’ updates about Brittany which are somehow even worse. 

(She’s glad that Brittany has friends and people around her but god, could Sam just stop checking into every fucking building in Lima and tagging Brittany every time he does it?)

She doesn’t miss Brittany if she doesn’t have to see her. Or her name. Or be reminded of her in any way. 

(Which is just— 

It’s kind of like asking her not to breathe, and sometimes she feels like she can’t catch her breath and there’s Brittany again, or a jacket she borrowed during the summer, or the blanket that used to live on Santana’s bed at home, which means it used to live wrapped around Brittany often enough and then— 

Well, she hasn’t learnt how not to breathe, yet.)

She’s made it through three weeks now, and even if she thought she was gonna die for almost all of it she’s still here. And she hasn’t been ambushed by any sweaters lately, so the day’s going pretty well, or at least as well as it can when she can’t pull out her phone to text Brittany all the stupid things that happen to her during cheer practice. 

Sue actually prepared her pretty well for this, so she doesn’t have to call home to complain like so many of the other girls do. She hears them talking to their boyfriends in the locker room, their voices drifting from two rows over as she rolls her eyes and gets dressed quickly, staring at nothing in particular.

Which is why Kerry has to wave her hand in front of her face three times to get her to pay attention.

“Earth to Santana,” and honestly who says that, but she just looks up and asks her what she wants.

“I saw Sara earlier and she gave me the tickets to the halloween masquerade party,” she waves them in Santana’s face, faster than she can follow. “You wanted two, right?”

Right, because Brittany was gonna come visit for the weekend so they could go together. 

“Um,” Santana says, and wonders how her face looks right now, just from the way Kerry is getting sort of concerned. “Just one, actually.”

“I thought your girlfriend was coming?” Kerry says, and this right here is why Santana only told her roommate and a couple of other people on the squad about what happened. It’s bad enough being known as the lesbian cheerleader from Lima, without being known as the girl with the relationship that fell apart six weeks into college.

“We broke up,” Santana says shortly, shifting back over to peer into her locker and pretend to reach for something inside. On the list of things she doesn’t want to talk about the break up is basically the whole fucking list in capslock and underlined a half dozen times, and Kerry gets the hint for once.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and sounds like she means it too. She’s still holding the tickets out towards her, kind of apologetically. “They’re paid for though. Maybe you could find someone else to go with?”

Yeah, that’s going to happen. In the back of her mind just the thought of it still feels like cheating on Brittany.

“I’ll give it to my roommate or something,” she says as she takes them, more than anything just to get Kerry to stop looking at her like that.

“Awesome,” Kerry says, and Santana really wants to ask exactly what part of this is supposed to be _fun_.

+

She pins the tickets to the shared noticeboard on the back of their door, and tries to forget about them, which would be fine if her roommate didn’t insist on asking her forty seven questions about it as soon as she sees them.

“But Jenna already got us tickets. You could take a date—” Melissa says and then cuts off when Santana gives her a look from where she’s lying on her bed trying to do the reading for the class she has in an hour. 

“Okay, you couldn’t take a date,” Melissa says.

“Not really, no,” Santana says, trying to memorize a page full of numbers. 

“Wait, does this mean I’m not your date? Like, I’m so hideous you wouldn’t even date me?” Melissa says with a shit eating grin, and Santana just throws a pillow at her without looking up.

(She kind of lucked out in the roommate department really. Melissa’s got Quinn’s seriousness, Tina’s acceptance, Mercedes’ warmth and just a little of Rachel’s drama. 

Brittany’s not the only one she misses from Lima.)

“Lesbians are throwing pillows at me now,” Melissa says, appealing to an imaginary audience, “Like I’m in some kind of frat boy fantasy or something.”

“You wish,” Santana says, and Melissa laughs as she throws her jacket on and gathers up her things off the desk.

“I’ll talk to Jenna and see if we can give the other ticket to someone, and then I’ll be your arm candy for the night,” she grins again as she pulls the door open, and Santana’s half-hearted, “Fuck you, I’m the hot one,” is swallowed by the door closing.

+

She manages to avoid the tickets until three days before the party, mostly because she finds Brittany’s old Cheerios t-shirt in this box she’s only just got round to unpacking, and ends up crying into it until Melissa comes back and finds her there, like some overly-emotional crazy girl in a high school movie.

(“Why don’t you call her?” Melissa asks, when she’s bringing her a cup of coffee later, and Santana just stares into it and doesn’t know how to tell her that would make everything so much worse.)

She bought a dress when she bought the tickets, but she’d shoved it into the back of her closet just to avoid looking at it, and there’s this three hour period where she seriously considers returning it and giving the tickets away and never thinking about it again. She actually lies in bed and pulls the covers up over her head, like that will make it go away, but when she peeks out the dress is still hanging there and the tickets are still on the door so she just pulls the covers up again and tries to remember how to breathe.

+

Melissa’s putting the finishing touches to her make up in the mirror when Santana says, “I’m not going.” 

“Shut up, this is my one chance to go out with another woman. You’re not ruining it,” Melissa says, turning to look at her. She looks like she’s not going to take any of Santana’s shit, and Santana shifts awkwardly, fiddling with the eye mask she hasn’t put on yet. 

She really hates Melissa sometimes.

“I’ll just stay here and catch up on my required reading,” she says, trying to toss the mask away. Melissa goes over to retrieve it, coming to stand in front of her as she reaches up and presses it to Santana’s eyes, tugging the string so it settles on the back of her head.

Melissa is disconcertingly like her friends sometimes, but the way she fixes her with her eyes is all Brittany, and something twists in Santana’s stomach, tighter than before.

“Come to the party, have fun, and then you can be a hermit all weekend. Baby steps, right?” she says, voice gentle, and Santana exhales noisily, forces herself to roll her eyes.

“You suck,” she says, and Melissa just laughs and reaches for her arm.

+

They meet Jenna on the way, and she’s alone so Santana guesses they didn’t manage to get rid of the spare ticket, which kind of makes her like Melissa a lot more just for a minute.

It’s been too long since she went to a party without a Brittany safety net, and when Jenna disappears into a crowd of people and Melissa looks like she wants to follow her her hand shoots out and grabs her before she knows what she’s doing. 

The fact that everyone is in masks is kind of freaking her out, and she knows it’s Halloween and this is so much better than being in a room full of people dressed as serial killers, because at least this has the illusion of being somewhat classy and not just another drunken college party, but with the way the lights are she can’t tell if people are looking at her or not so she doesn’t know who to tell to go fuck themselves, just as a sort of defence mechanism.

“You’re not leaving me,” she says and just manages to swallow the too from the end of the sentence, even though she knows that it didn’t really happen that way.

“I was going to find the keg,” Melissa says over the music.

“I’ll come with you,” Santana replies, but Melissa shakes her head, pointing to a group of girls in the corner. “Go find your cheerleader buddies. I’ll get us a beer and come back.”

 _Promise?_ Santana wants to say, but that’s another level of lame that she’s not prepared to hit right now, so she just nods and forces herself to let go of Melissa’s arm. 

She used to be good at this, or at least she used to be good at pretending she was good at this, but even if she does look hot in her dress she just can’t be bothered to deal with it all right now. Halloween is a lot less fun without Brittany getting ridiculously excited over costumes and offering her the candy that she’d stolen from her sister’s trick or treat bag after she’d fallen asleep. 

And now she’s thinking about Brittany again and the way she’d looked last year in that red—

(“What are you supposed to be again?” she’d asked, because it wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate the way she looked, but her mind kind of kept getting stuck, and Brittany had leaned back off her lap to swipe the packaging off her desk.

“A devil,” Brittany read, and then smirked. “Devils are sexy, I guess. That’s why it’s so hot in hell.”)

She’s not finishing that thought. 

She can’t even get through a holiday without it reminding her of Brittany, and the thought makes her want to laugh but she can barely get through a day without it reminding her of Brittany either, so.

She can see her friends from the squad across the room so she forces herself to take a breath and let it out slowly before she picks her way across to them, easing around people carefully, trying not to catch anyone’s eye. Which is why her eyes are on the floor, so when someone steps in front of her all she sees is black shoes and the bottoms of black pants, and her first instinct is to tell the guy to fuck off and push past him without giving him a glance.

“Dance with me?”

It’s a voice she only hears in her dreams, these days.

She looks up, finding hips and curves where there should be none, a white shirt open at the neck and a black jacket over it, casual but perfect for a ball all the same, except the person wearing it is definitely not the kind of prince her abuela used to tell her bedtime stories about when she was a kid. Her blonde hair is tied back, and when she gets to the mask, black with gold strands glinting under the lights, she finds clear blue eyes looking back at her. 

She doesn’t know who she thinks she’s kidding.

“Brittany?” she says. Her eyes linger on the way the shirt clings to her in this way that really shouldn’t be allowed. 

The girl in front of her smiles, just a quick quirk of her lips that vanishes almost as soon as it starts. “No,” she says, “Not tonight.”

She wants to ask her what she means, but Brittany just takes her hand and leads her onto the dance floor instead. People actually step aside to let them through, like this really is some kind of fairytale, but she’s never had that kind of luck.

(Cinderella was always Brittany’s favorite fairytale as a kid, not because the girl got the prince in the end, she said, but because they got to meet each other with masks on, “So no one could look at the surface and ignore the stuff inside.”

“What do you mean, Britt?” Santana had said, straightening her freshman Cheerios skirt.

“Nothing.”)

It’s only then that it registers that the music that’s playing is this classical waltzy type stuff, just to add to the theme, although the fact that it’s playing from an iPod hooked up to the stereo in the corner makes her want to laugh, like there’s only so far the period accuracy goes. Or, whatever, maybe they’re trying to pass it off as some kind of fairy magic, since this is rapidly turning into a fairytale.

Brittany glances at her again, her fingers tightening where they grip hers.

It’s almost too much, Brittany dressed like that, leading her into the clearing in the middle of the room, where there’s a few couples already dancing. She wants to ask her what this means, or say something, only she can’t find her voice because Brittany is staring at her like she’s the best thing she’s ever seen, but with this edge in it too, like if she does speak it’s all going to fall apart. 

Brittany bows, actually bows, with that half smile back on her face, and then she straightens and steps closer, reaching for Santana’s hand. Brittany’s hand is warm at her waist, her fingers curling into the fabric of her dress, and they fit together the same way they always did when Brittany leads her through a waltz, like they’re in some costume drama, her eyes never leaving her face.

It’s ridiculous. It’s patently ridiculous, but it doesn’t feel that way as they move together in time with the music. They shouldn’t be doing this—Brittany shouldn’t be here—because she’s starting to forget that they’re not them anymore, that they’re not supposed to be in different cities pretending that they’re both okay with this. 

“Stop thinking,” Brittany says, finding her eyes, her grip tightening for just a moment around Santana’s fingers. Santana hates how it sounds kind of desperate. “Just turn it off.”

(She used to say it to her before, last year when everything meant so much and she always felt like she had to work out all the angles, like there was going to be some kind of trap in there if only she looked hard enough. 

“There’s no monsters in the closet, Santana,” Brittany used to tell her when they were little, only it turned out that there were, but Santana was the only one who could see them.)

Brittany moves in and presses a kiss to Santana’s temple and stays there, her nose pressed against her so Santana can feel her breathing in counterpoint, out when she breathes in. 

She hates how that’s the thing that convinces her to nod, like just Brittany’s breath against her skin for a second is enough to make all the reasons she knows this isn’t a good idea disappear.

She’s _not_ easy, but it’s _Brittany_ and— 

"Okay,” Santana whispers, and she feels Brittany smile against her skin, leans into the touch.

They shouldn’t be doing this but Brittany's looking at her with this weird mixture of happy-sad and she can’t stop herself from leaning in to find her lips, feeling all the places she missed Brittany the most as their mouths meet and Brittany’s hand drops into the small of her back to hold her closer. 

She shouldn't be doing this. She promised herself she wouldn't hurt her again, and even though there's so many years of evidence to the contrary she'd told herself that she'd meant it this time. 

She honestly wants to laugh at how little her promises mean these days.

When she starts to pull back Brittany tries to go with her, whines a little into her mouth. “No,” Brittany says, her hands cupping her face trying to pull her back. “It’s okay,” but it isn’t, it isn’t at all.

“Brittany,” she starts to say, only she can’t go any further because Brittany is kissing her again, and she’s not proud of the way her whole body curls back into her, the way a hand finds its way into the twists of hair that have fallen loose around Brittany’s face.

“Is this okay?” Brittany says against her lips and she nods into the next kiss, desire burning low in her stomach. “Just for tonight,” Brittany’s mumbling between kisses. “Just let us be not-us for tonight. Just until midnight when the magic runs out.”

It’s the thought of Brittany’s magic running out at all that makes her stop, makes her pull back and put some space between them. They’re long past the point of being too old for this, but Brittany has always convinced her to believe in magic, and she looks up into her eyes through the holes in the mask, trying to work out what she means, “What are you saying?”

Brittany takes a breath and the nervousness in her eyes makes Santana’s stomach flutter. “I’m saying can we go back to your room before I turn into a pumpkin?” Her voice hitches up on the last word, like that was the hard part for her to say, and it’s so Brittany that it makes her ache.

It’s not even the strangest proposition she’s heard from her over the years, which doesn’t help because it makes her remember all the others. She should say no, she should say this isn’t a good idea, she should say that it would just complicate everything even further than this one dance has already managed to.

She says, “Yes,” and reaches for her hand.

+

They pass Melissa on the way out, and it’s only when she doesn’t look surprised that Santana is apparently getting out of there with some girl that she realizes what Melissa and Jenna did with the spare ticket.

Okay, maybe she doesn’t hate them all the time.

“I’m staying at Jenna’s tonight,” Melissa says when they go past, and Santana blushes all the way down the hallway and out into the night.

+

It’s a lot colder out than she remembers it being, and Brittany takes her jacket off to drape it around her shoulders, leaving her in nothing but a shirt and shivering against the air.

“You don’t have to—” Santana starts to say, but Brittany cuts her off.

“I know. I wanted to.” 

She's not so sure they're just talking about the jacket anymore. 

+

She almost drops the key when they get to her door, Brittany looking around carefully like she’s pretending she hasn’t noticed. It’s stupid, but the first thing she thinks is how glad she is that she put her laundry away earlier, and that Melissa is so good about keeping her stuff clean too, because at least it means she doesn’t have to be embarrassed about how the room looks, even if somewhere in the back of her mind she is thinking that maybe she should have taken the pictures of her and Brittany down off her desk because it kind of looks a little bit like a crazy person’s shrine.

At least Brittany can’t see in her closet. It looks like a Brittany themed episode of _Hoarders_ in there.

Brittany takes a step into the room and peers around, and Santana shifts uncomfortably, twisting her hands against each other as she tries to pretend this is all normal. 

“I didn’t take mine down either,” she mumbles at the pictures, and then she’s turning and reaching for Santana’s hands to lace their fingers together. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

But it's too late because now one of them mentioned the giant elephant in the room and there’s nothing anymore to stop her from talking about it too. 

“Why are you here, Britt?” There’s something about this that just feels— not wrong exactly, but a step backwards, even if she is looking Brittany in the eye.

“I miss you,” Brittany breathes, even though that’s not what she asked. “I just wanted to be magical again, for one night.” 

“Like Cinderella,” Santana says, because she remembers, and Brittany nods sadly. 

“But we’re not kids anymore,” Brittany huffs out this laugh that makes it sound like her heart is breaking and she can’t stop herself from thinking _again_ , it sounds like her heart is breaking _again_. Santana takes a half step forward before she knows what she’s doing, but Brittany turns, not letting her come closer. 

She knows Brittany doesn’t just mean the fairytale thing. She means the having sex and pretending it means nothing thing, because they proved long ago that that doesn’t work. She doesn’t know who they’re trying to kid.

“I’m sorry, I thought that this— I’m screwing things up again,” Brittany rubs her hand again her forehead, and it kills her because she said _again_ like any of this is her fault.

“No, Brittany, you didn’t—” 

“Yeah, I know,” Brittany says quietly, sad smile on her face, and that’s even worse than before.

She doesn’t know what to say because this is something she didn’t think would ever happen, Brittany here in her dorm room while they both try so desperately not to talk about the one thing they really should talk about. She watches Brittany wipe at her eyes, lifting her mask enough to get her finger underneath. 

“I should have just stayed at home,” Brittany says, and Santana shakes her head, because even though this hurts, she wouldn’t trade it for the world.

She used to think it was the hurt that made it worth it, because easy things aren’t worth doing or some other cliche like that, but it’s Brittany that makes it worth it. It was always Brittany.

She takes a breath and moves forward, stilling Brittany’s hands as she tries to settle her mask back against her eyes. “Do you have to leave?” she asks, even though she knows it’s a bad idea. She can feel the nervous tension in Brittany’s hands as she holds her arms still.

“I got a room at a motel,” Brittany says softly, her eyes shy now when she glances at her. “But I could stay for a little while.”

Santana tugs the mask up and over Brittany’s head and tosses it over onto her desk, and tries to ignore how just that makes her fingers tremble. 

“Can we just lie down?” her voice comes out quiet and unsure, and she swallows to try and clear it. “We don’t have to do anything, but just— just lie with me?” She doesn’t want to think about how pathetic that is, how in another life she’d laughed at the boys who’d said it to her. 

Brittany would never laugh at her.

“I’d like that,” Brittany murmurs, as her hand creeps into Santana’s.

They don’t get undressed, just kick their shoes off and crawl up onto the bed, never more than a couple of inches away. They fumble awkwardly, like they’re both trying to keep from touching too much, which doesn’t really work in the single dorm room beds. She wobbles and Brittany’s hand steadies her on her hip, and it’s too much all over again.

“Sorry,” Brittany murmurs, her hand falling away.

This is stupid, pretending there’s any way this is going to work, even with her track record in denial, and she wants to reach across the little inch of space between them as they face each other but she can’t make her hand move. Their knees bump together and Brittany jumps, trying to bend her legs behind her to give Santana more room. 

This is so fucking stupid.

She forces herself to move, to reach for Brittany slowly, her hand coming up to trace her cheekbone before she drops it lower, to her shoulder, her arm, her wrist, before finding her hip. Brittany sighs out a breath and surges forward, like that’s all she was waiting for, and then her hands tug the mask Santana’s still wearing off and settle on her face, her fingers hooked behind her jaw as her thumbs stroke against her cheeks.

She can’t stop herself from leaning into the touch, and Brittany smiles at her, the first genuine smile she’s given her all night, before she closes her eyes and drops her head forward to rest against Santana’s. She keeps her eyes open, even though all she can really see is a blur of Brittany’s pale skin. She doesn’t want to miss anything, this time.

She’s probably going to regret it in the morning, when Brittany’s gone and she’s remembered how she feels in her arms, how perfectly they always fit together like this. Brittany’s feet tangle up with hers and she doesn’t want to care about the rest of it, because Brittany would say that Cinderella didn’t worry about the morning after and the prince still showed up at her door the next day.

There’s this tiny bit of her that wonders if she can steal Brittany’s shoe without her noticing.

“I could stay, if you wanted me to,” Brittany says after a while, opening her eyes to look at her, and Santana swallows the lump in her throat.

“I’d like that,” she says, and Brittany nods, bumping their foreheads together.

They stay there for a long time, both of them just breathing and looking at each other, taking in the little things they missed. It’s not enough and too much all at once, and after a while she has to spin away because she can’t stand to see the sadness in Brittany’s eyes and know she put it there. She never could face shitty things head on, much less the ones she did herself. She presses herself backwards instead, and Brittany curls around her body, holding her close. 

She can feel Brittany’s lips against the top of her spine with every breath she takes, cold and then hot as she inhales and exhales. She doesn’t speak because she doesn’t want to ruin it, and from the way Brittany is holding her she guesses she feels the same way, like this has to be enough for now because anything else would wreck them all over again.

She doesn’t want to wreck them all over again.

+

She falls asleep somewhere between Brittany murmuring an “I love you,” into her hair and an “I miss you” against her neck, and some time after she starts crying and has to turn around in the circle of Brittany’s arms to bury her face against her chest, Brittany holding her together when she can’t do it herself.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Brittany murmurs over and over again, her voice breaking each time she tries to say it.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she sobs back. 

She means it, every single time.

+

She knows she’s alone before she opens her eyes in the morning, and so she doesn’t, just rolls onto her back and stretches out, reaching to make sure. It’s a single bed, dorm room standard, but it’s never felt so big and she feels the first tears spill, reaches up to brush them away.

She gasps for breath when the first sobs crawl up her throat, and she guesses she still doesn't know how to breathe without Brittany, which is just so pathetic she doesn't even know how to deal with it. She knew this was going to hurt, but the fact that Brittany didn’t even say goodbye or give her any kind of warning that she was leaving— 

Well, she guesses she didn’t give Brittany one either.

It takes her a long time to open her eyes and sit up, rubbing her hands over her face to try and calm herself down. She takes several noisy breaths as she looks around the room.

Brittany’s mask is still on her desk, and it’s not a shoe, but.


End file.
